The US press drives for the 2012 BMW 3 series sedan (F30) has kicked off in beautiful Monterey, California and we had the pleasure of taking a 335i Sport Line with 6-speed manual transmission out for a spin today. This is the first time that the F30 335i and F30 manual transmission has been made available for testing by BMW.

Our review will come a bit later, but we had a blast in the F30 335i. Enjoy the photos of our red 335i Sport Line, an Imperial Blue 335i Luxury Line, and a Alpine White base 328i. More photos, videos, and material to come in the next few days.

The Sport interior looks fantastic in these photos. Finally some properly exposed pics that keep the black looking black rather than a dark grey. The red trim on the dash even looks good in these great pics. Exterior-wise, I would like to see the rear of the Sport with its two black guns sticking out!

The Sport interior looks fantastic in these photos. Finally some properly exposed pics that keep the black looking black rather than a dark grey. The red trim on the dash even looks good in these great pics. Exterior-wise, I would like to see the rear of the Sport with its two black guns sticking out!

Thanks

And the red trim looks even better (and not as red) in person. It's a nice matte/satin finish too.

I noticed that the fender gap is minimal on these pictures of the red 335i, which looks much better than other pics of sport lines we have seen.

I wonder why the pics of the NAIAS cars seem to have such a large fender gap on the supposed sport line models. Unless those were pre-production dummy cars, not equipped with the real sport suspension yet.